How has comedy developed?

Both MisFits and Are you being served feature comedy elements for the audience of that time.

Are you being served typically had a more traditional sitcom comedy style. This means that during the scene, events generate chances for the characters to give a sarcastic comment or some other slapstick action. This is scene during the scene 'Sexy Knickers' we saw a customer trying on a pair of trousers and a character who is a the till rips a piece of paper to make it seem as though the customer has ripped the trousers. This style of comedy, although seems a bit basic and out of date compared to modern day comedy programs, the overall style of using comedy is still used in a similar way today. We see this in Misfits where we see Nathan give sarcastic comments at every opportunity, for example when he talks to his mum about how she shouldn't kick him out, and she says that she needs to give her relationship a chance. Nathan then comes out with a sarcastic comment of 'has Jezza been crying to you at night over me'. This shows that the typical slapstick comedy is still delivered in a similar way to how it was delivered in the 1970's.

But not all comedy is the same between the 70's and now. We find in 'Are you being served' when two of the employees are serving a customer that they use small tricks to try and make clothes bigger, for example putting their knee inside the arms of jackets to make them bigger. The other character then tries this with a pair of trousers and ends up ripping them completely. They then use canned laughter to show that this is a particular comedy event, but now adays this is out of date and not funny enough for today's society. We then find that in todays modern comedies, stereotypes is a key role in producing comedies. This comes through them having 5 characters each with a different stereotype, for example the stereotype of Nathan, the Irish Kid, who is a stereotypical loudmouth character that says things before he thinks. Also the powers mean that they have additional comedy areas to explore. This comes through when we see Alisha's power which is Sexual Pheromone Manipulation, which ends up using sexually styled comedy for the audiences pleasure. This shows that not only are they using stereotypes they are using sexually styled comedy to generate modern day comedy.

The Sexually styled comedy in MisFits is a stereotypical controversial comedy area. This means that Channel 4 have decided to explore a more explicit style of comedy that wouldn't have been acceptable to broadcast in the 70's but is on the edge of what is acceptable now, showing that our perception of comedy seems to have changed to the modern day style of comedy.